He’s got the clout, but not the punchy title

While at Tampa Bay & Co. for the news conference, Buckhorn dropped by the president's office and tried out the desk that his chief of staff, Santiago Corrada, is scheduled to move into in two weeks in his new job as CEO of the tourism development agency. "Just when he thinks he's rid of us, we're everywhere," Buckhorn said.

As the top elected official in a strong-mayor form of government, Tampa’s Bob Buckhorn wields a lot of local authority, but he doesn’t have a job title with the linguistic vigor that he encountered on a trip to Germany last week.

In Munich, Tampa officials said, Buckhorn’s mayoral counterpart is known as the “über Oberbürgermeister,” or lord mayor.

“They have a lot of ceremonial names for the mayors in Europe, but they don’t give them as much power as they give them here,” said Rick Homans, president and CEO of the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp.

Still, it’s got a nice ring, so Buckhorn’s co-delegates from the mission called him to the microphone for a news conference Monday morning by saying, essentially, come on, bürgermeister.

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